All over Britain, women are kneeling in front of their tellies, heads low, shoulders shaking, tears and mucus dripping from their reddened faces like rain from a suburban gutter. They've just watched the new £6m John Lewis advert. Let me talk you through it. A woman picks up a baby, but when she puts it down it's become a toddler. The toddler crawls through a tunnel, and emerges as a child, looking up at her teacher. Then she's blowing out the candles on her sixth birthday cake, but no! It's her 18th birthday cake!

She's married, as seen below, she's pregnant, she's stealing the cherry from her granddaughter's cupcake and now she's retired, walking languidly through a field. She ages 70 years over a minute and a half, and offscreen, presumably, as this advert ends and segues into the one where Paul Daniels urges you to send away your old mobile in a handy plastic envelope, she dies, a fast but painless death, and is lowered into the ground in a well-priced John Lewis coffin.

Blame it on the soundtrack, a lo-fi version of Billy Joel's She's Always a Woman, blame it on the ferociously aspirational domestic life depicted, or the misty colour-wash – it's working. JohnLewis.com has seen a 39.7% leap in sales, despite the advert's sorry message – 'You're going to die, ladies, so buy from us, while you still have breath enough to weep'.